What Could Have Been
by RavenclawsLioness
Summary: Takes place right after Petunia left Harry in the Living Room in DH. What she should have said to him, what she should have said to Lily, and how it's too late. ONESHOT.


**A/N**

**I know I should be working on **_**He Shall be Mine**_**, but I just couldn't resist writing a one shot. Hope you like it.**

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As Petunia walked out the front door of number 4 Privet Drive, she suddenly felt a hollow, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew this feeling all too well, for this was the feeling she had had when that _awful boy_ told Lily she was a witch. It was the feeling she had when Lily boarded the train to that freak school. The feeling Petunia had the morning she found her dead sister's son on her doorstep. It was the feeling Petunia Dursley had when she knew she was separating herself from her sister. 

Petunia actually hadn't thought her sister was a freak. She had just been jealous. She'd loved Lily dearly, but the day Severus Snape told them that Lily was a witch; a brick wall seemed to form between them. It only seemed to grow when the boy's words had been proved true by Lily's acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Knowing that it wouldn't be long before her dear sister would be leaving, Petunia had written a letter to Professor Dumbledore begging him to allow her to come with her sister. Unfortunately, the Headmaster had kindly responded in saying that Muggles simply couldn't attend Hogwarts.

On September first, Petunia had been in her sourest of moods. She'd said many hurtful things to Lily, but the one thing that had made the wall forever impenetrable, had been Petunia's calling Lily a freak. After that, Lily never wrote to Petunia from school, and when Lily came home for the summer, they hardly spoke to each other. What could they say? Of course, on the summer after Lily's first year, she had spent the first two weeks trying to persuade Petunia to talk to her. When she finally got the message, that Petunia didn't seem to want anything to do with her, she abandoned all attempts of friendship with her sister, and would always hang out with Severus. What they did, Petunia never found out.

What Lily hadn't known was that Petunia had wanted ever so dearly to accept her sister's offers for peace. But being the proud child that she was, Petunia simply couldn't say it to Lily. Or at least not to her face. Petunia had had many a daydream over the years about what it would have been like if she hadn't been so full of herself. But the proud child had grown into a proud adult.

When Petunia had gotten Lily's wedding invitation, she had thrown it away without a second glance, for she had her own perfectly normal life to worry about. She wasn't to think about her younger sister until the morning she had found her son on her doorstep. When Petunia had read the note from Dumbledore explaining that Lily and her husband had been killed and that she was to take care of her son, Petunia had cried. Of course she hadn't cried in front of Vernon, who looked down on anything he couldn't explain, or Dudley who needed constant attention; she had wept that night, when Vernon, Dudley, and Lily's son, Harry, were all asleep. That was the only time of day her arrogant exterior could melt before her eyes without raising suspicions.

She knew that she and Vernon had been unkind to Harry. Vernon had treated the boy like that because of what he thought of Lily's 'kind'. Petunia had been unbearable towards Harry because whenever she saw him, his eyes always stood out. No matter how much the boy looked like his father, he would always have those eyes. They were Lily's eyes. The eyes that Petunia had many a time stared coldly into, whether they were on Lily's face, or her son's. Those eyes were windows to the way things used to be. There was no other reason for her treatment towards him.

That's what Petunia had wanted to say to him. That she loved him and his mother. But of course, being the proud woman she was, Petunia had merely left without so much as a proper goodbye. The memory would haunt her to her dying day.

So, as she stared out the window of the moving car; Petunia contemplated what she should have said. In her mind's eye, she saw herself and Harry in the living room alone together. She pictured herself telling him that he and his mother would always have a special place in her heart, that they were her family and that she loved them. She saw the boy and herself locked in an embrace. That was something she had never done.

But as Vernon grumbled for the thousandth time about _'the freaks never learning how to drive'_, Petunia saw that she was too late. Lily was dead, and Harry was out of her life possibly forever. Her opportunities were gone. Her chances wasted. All Petunia had left, was what could have been.


End file.
